Redouté revisited

You will probably have noticed that I have a soft spot for flowers, so when my good friend and fellow artist Mandy told me the Fitzwilliam museum here in Cambridge had an exhibition of Redouté original paintings I was there within the hour. 

I bought the above book back in my college days, I don't think I paid much for it but it has been well thumbed and travelled since, so to be able to stand in front of the real thing was a real treat. Of course I quickly spotted that many of the exhibits didn't look like Redouté's work and looked again. A lot of them were signed by other people and they were all women! Turns out the exhibition featured the work of some of his pupils, one of which was immediately familiar because the postcard of the same image has been stuck to my studio wall for a while now.

Can you see it? Just next to the little spice chest in the window. And there it was in all it's glory. Marie Anne, 19th century, Camellia Japonica Var. and Cineraria. Watercolour and bodycolour on vellum. Delicately and skillfully painted and simply beautiful. (Though quite why my postcard has a pale blue background I'm not sure).

How many times have you stood on front of an old painting, looked at it in awe maybe but not really fully understood it. For some reason these precisely painted floral watercolours of varying different styles suddenly connected with me in a way I've not really experienced before. Maybe it's because they were women, maybe because it's rare to see works of pupil and master together in one room, maybe it's because they are a subject and medium I am familiar with myself. But somehow I could actually imagine the artist painting each picture, all those years ago. Carefully studying each line, each petal, each fine, fine detail with care and attention. I know how that feels as an artist. Creating a drawing of such control is a very transitional and ethereal experience, and each finished work claims a life of its own that seperates it from its creator. I suddenly found my self wanting to know more about these women, what kind of life they led (undoubtably a privileged one to be painting in the first place) and most significantly what their art actually meant to them.

I find myself at a point in my life where suddenly my art is more important than my career; my circumstances have never really allowed me to really pursue this need I have to create and in order to support my family I have had to take on commercial work instead. Not that there is anything wrong with that of course but artists that have the freedom to do what they 'want' to do are very few and far between and I fear that I will run out of chances to really find out what I can do.

Standing in that exhibiton room I wondered if these artists knew when they created their small masterpieces they would be preserved and recollected and shown together again for later generations to enjoy. I wondered if any of my work would ever stand the test of time to be scrutinised by future students of my craft. Probably not, but I need to at least try...

Joseph-Pierre Redouté (1759-1840) was internationally famous for his botanical drawings and also had over 80 pupils, many of them women. Some of them went on to be professional painters in their own right.

To find out more visit...

http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/whatson/exhibitions/article.html?2896